The loss of mobile customers is something of an ongoing trend for Vodafone New Zealand this year. The company shed 41,000 customers between April and July this year. This was on top of it losing 9,000 customers between January and April.

Of the 2.3 million customers Vodafone had as at 30 September, 66.2 per cent are prepaid, down from 66.5 per cent at 1 July.

This suggests a number of the customers Vodafone lost were on prepaid accounts, which typically bring in less revenue for a telco than post-paid.

Despite the losses, Vodafone is still New Zealand's largest mobile operator.

At it latest financial results, Telecom revealed it had around 1.6 million mobile connections following the close of its ageing CDMA network while 2degrees announced in August it had over 1 million mobile connections.